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As far as I understood it, it was that the evidence suggested - to some degree of certainty - that the genes of all extra-African races were different from sub-Saharan African races to a level that agreed with Neanderthal sequences. Obviously the errors were large - and acknowledged in the studies - but so far as I understood the reasoning for the implications, Homo Sapiens was reputed to have interbred with Homo Neanderthalis at least in the Middle East at about the point that we left Africa, simply because all of us who aren't predominantly sub-Saharan African have the same gene sequence as some recently-sequence Neanderthal fossils.

So far as that goes, fair enough. I remember reading a lot of that kind of thing a good few months back. And a natural implication is that anyone who isn't sub-Sahran African probably has Neanderthal in them. (Entertainingly, of course, many sub-Saharans also will. This is due to humans, err, interacting constantly and repeatedly and the effects propogating through populations. But the studies took that kind of simple-minded thing into account, of course.)

So, all that it really says is that at least one Neanderthal engaged in bestiality. Given the number of generations since then, it's not surprising that most of the world can trace one of the myriad of ancestries also to that incident.

What is surprising is that it hasn't spread back to Africa.

There could, perhaps, be a gene that suppresses that marker, e.g. by causing infertility when encountered, while at the same time increasing the chance of survival in Africa? Something like sickle cell anemia or lact

Is it politically correct these days to use the phrase "Homo" in front of any words? Can't be to sure, you know. This also explains the urges I keep having to go club some animal to death and half cook it over an open fire. (Could also explain the tendency to howl at a full moon)

Just imagine all the Beavis and Butthead type huh-huh-huhs had this article been about Homo Erectus [wikipedia.org], and even more so had it been about Homo Erectus remains being found near Lake Titicaca, and somehow involving a big chunk of interplanetary material that got ejected to Earth from Uranus.

You missed the part where they've found evidence that most humans have Neanderthal genes.

I always wondered why the assumption was genocide, when human communities tend to favor marriage to members of adjacent groups, and by most accounts I've read, Neanderthals would have been almost indistinguishable from anatomically modern humans, anyway. It just always seemed to make the most sense that the Neanderthals would have simply been absorbed by the larger group.

I was, of course being facetious in my remark. However, it got me thinking (dangerous I know). Is it not possible that, due to some very minor genetic mutation in Africans 170,000 years ago or so the, pituitary gland began to produce ever-so-slightly less GH, while it continued normally for Neanderthal populations. This reduction in GH produced Africans with less pronounced facial features, while these feature remained prominent in Neanderthals. It seems to me, as many genetic mutations do, that every once

waves of populations come in and slaughter the existing population, completely displacing it.

GP doesn't necessarily contradict this theory. It makes sense to me. They killed all the males and kept the females for pleasure, many of which resulted in offspring. These offspring came to dominate to the point that very few tribes existed that were not tribes descendants of this hybridization. Not too hard for me to believe.

It could be a merger, it could be a little bit of gene flow followed by extinction. The data don't say.

A previous result suggested non-African humans have about 4% of their genome descended from Neandertals. For the sake of argument, I'll take that as a fact.

Merger scenario: a big wave of modern humans flow into Neandertal territory, outnumbering them by about 25 to one. They all form one big happy interbreeding population, soon forming a uniform gene pool which is about 4% Neandertal, reflecting the origin

So creationists have been arguing that evolution is true, and that we're the descendents of Neanderthals? Oh no, that's not it at all. You're "predicting" that Neanderthals were just like we are, and that "sub-humans" could never have been created. GTFO

Additionally, that page tried claiming that scientists dated neanderthals "post-flood". So.... a few thousand years? Really? How can anybody take that seriously?

To GP: And if you're using a compilation of books written by man, whose compilation itself was chosen by man over a thousand years later... all of which was written from the perspectives of people from a very, very, very limited geographic region as a basis for these outlandish claims (including a global flood) then you're a bigger fool than you

No, they made believe that H. neadertals were just a race of H. sapiens, and certainly didn't believe that anyone before H. sapiens ever left Africa. Actually, I suspect almost none of them even believe that humans came from Africa at all.

Somehow I doubt that telling those white supremacists that they're the ones descended from Neanderthals and that the Africans are the only group lacking Neanderthal DNA would do anything to change their perspectives.

Somehow I doubt that telling those white supremacists that they're the ones descended from Neanderthals and that the Africans are the only group lacking Neanderthal DNA would do anything to change their perspectives.

What do you mean, "change perspectives"? Clearly our people are most direct descendants of a superior Neanderthal people, and hence should be the master race. Neanderthal power! ~

Indeed, cross-breeding generally results in the deficits in each species diminishing and the strengths aggregating. It's a phenomenon known as heterosis [wikipedia.org] or hybrid vigor. The explanation is simple: dominant genes tend to be those which benefit the species (natural selection will tend to eliminate dominant genes which retard the species). Mating with an organism that contains a vast number of completely different genes which gives you a whole new set of dominant genes. Gene's that you didn't have to mutate in your own ancestral lines It's a genetic gold mine.

That's irrelevant. "Genetically inferior" has no meaning. Are ants inferior? If so, why are there so many of them and so few of us? Instead, we assert our current existence to be the pinnacle, and rate other creatures on a scale of how close they are to us. Not to mention that there are other factors that could have resulted in one species thriving while the other went extinct that was irrelevant to "genetic superiority" and instead adaptability or disease resistance or such. Perhaps the "genetically inferior" were less aggressive, so they were killed off, despite the fact they were smarter and stronger or whatever trait you associate with "genetic superiority."

Instead of proclaiming who is better or worse with subjective labels, why not define the underlaying definitions in your assumptions and address those specifically?

Actually, from genetic point of view, there is a clear system of superiority and inferiority. Superior ones have a bright future as they are adapting to ever changing environment successfully. Failures are dying out because of their failures to adapt, and those in between hang in there. Human action has been a very powerful factor to split those superior to those inferior - for example big mammals like wolves have been all but hunted to extinction in Europe as humans progressed. At the same time, flies, sea

It is you who are missing the fact - we were found to contain some of their genes - this is not the same as being them. We lack many of their distinctive features, meaning that they have in fact lost evolutionary war and are extinct. We are still here.

The whole point of this article is that they're still around. And not only are they still around, but they are still around in all the countries that are currently "winning" the global game of Civilization

Since Neanderthals left Africa first, and are currently still around in the Civs that have been teching the fastest, one could make the argument that their genes are superior.

Except that they're not around - they're extinct. The rules for declaring species extinct are very well honed and clear, and neanderthals are in fact extinct.

Just because we share some genes with them, doesn't mean that we are them. These genes could have gotten into the pool via many means, from interbreeding to simply having those genes as a part of shared pool. Else you could claim that we are in fact elephants, or dolphins, or even sharks because we share so much of our genome with them as well.

Except that there is no firm evidence to suggest what you're saying. We just know that certain aspect of our genome is shared. In this regard, hte genome could have been shared by a vast array of means, from crossbreeding, which is being suggested in the OP, to the far more likely shared ancestry (which is not yet found and has been searched for for decades as of writing this).

If you claim that in spite of above, any species that shares genome that is present in any successful modern species, then by your r

If homo neanderthaliensis cross-bred with homo sapiens, wiped him out, and continued to be largely homo neanderthaliensis with no visible or dominant feature of homo sapiens, how could you call homo sapiens successful?

You could not, because it would be a failed branch of evolutionary tree that got assimilated and severed by an competitor without keeping any of the traits of the genus.

"Inferior" Homo Neanderthalensis lived as a distinct group for half a million years, surviving the toughest conditions imaginable with very limited technology, I's say that the modern hiker, who dies of exposure/starvation in 40F weather within 200 yards of a road is inferior! Could you live a night wrapped in several animal hides, probably without a fire, in ice age weather -70F?

That inferior Homo neanderthalensis also evolved to live during a specific climatic period with specific fauna and as specific group sizes. those factors changed and they were very easily overcome by a much more flexible Homo sapiens sapiens.

Homo sapiens sapiens got the important genetic adaptations to survive in the region from Homo neanderthalensis inter breading, after that there was little that Humans could not do. All they needed was a few more layers of clothing than H. neanderthalensis.

And don't forget those sea cucumbers that live near volcanic vents! They can survive in boiling sulfurous water. We could never do that, so clearly they are superior.

Ok kidding aside. We simply don't have that skillset anymore - we don't need it. But we are smart enough to make an aluminum bag and land it on the moon. Soon as we find a Neanderthal skeleton on the moon I'll be convinced of their superiority.

you're an idiot... they had significantly larger amounts of muscle mass which correlates to brain size due to the increased need for muscle control.

Neanderthal had no significant culture until they encountered humans and did not change their social behaviors much at all in their entire existence.... both point to low abstract intelligence.... also known as the metric that humans use to measure what is colloquially considered intelligence.

Elephants have a much larger brain then humans. Thing with brain is, size isn't what is important. It's the surface of the brain gray matter and what functions it's allocated for that counts. And in these aspects, homo sapiens absolutely crushed the opposition.

"In fact, it would appear you're being racist, in your implication that the Neanderthal race is inherently worse than other races... on the basis of what, cranial volume of a few fossils?"

Where did you get *that* from? Yes, plenty of people have done that (though technically they're not being racist; Neanderthals are a separate species to us, and don't try and pretend different species can't interbreed because they can and any definition of "species" that works will yield separate "species" that do so - if

Well, thirty thousand years ago there was pronounced differences between Neandertal and modern H. sapiens toolkits. If you go back about 100,000 years where, for instance, Neandertals and modern-looking humans lived in close proximity in the Levant, the striking thing is that the toolkits were very similar.

this finding was in X chromosome, not mitochondria. so this could have easily been the other way around (neanderthal fucking sapien). logically i do not think (i ain't no expert in this field) even a strongest male sapien could have overpowered a young female neanderthal. only way i could see this plausible (again, i am no expert in this field), an intercourse through multiple male co-operative dominance (simply put, a gang rape). even then, i doubt, as an healthy neanderthal can overpower a strongest h

H. neanderthalensis evolved from H. erectus which left Africa 400 to 800 thousand years ago and spread from Europe to Asia and even some of the Indonesian islands. H. neanderthalensis is thus, descended from a species that left Africa, but is not FROM Africa.

There is plenty of evidence that we are cognitively superior to Neanderthal. Brain size is not equal to intelligence. the size of a brain is proportional to the physical size of an animal. What is related to intelligence is the density of the cerebral cortex. Since we can not measure the cerebral cortex of Neanderthal, we have to look at archaeological evidence for abstract thinking (culture, society, and technology). In all three cases, Neanderthal was pretty much static until they encountered modern human

So.. Just how "different" are/were they? It sounds to me like we are calling neanderthals non homosapiens when in reality they are no more different from us than say a tall blond Scandinavian is from a short Asian.. Or a chihuahua from a great dane.

From what I understand paleontologists love balling each other out over this sort of things. Doubly so when humans are involved.

If early modern humans and neanderthals were still closely related enough to mate should they be considered the same speciees? If so then our species has a much larger family tree than thought. If not then why would the offspring of the two different species mating be considered homo sapient and not homo neanderthalensis. Why why why?

a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring

. So if humans and neanderthals could in fact interbreed, then wouldn't they be the same species? Were they any further apart than pygmys and tall white europeans? I would think that if neanderthals had survived to this day, they would have all the same rights as the rest of humans, and probably be considered human.

Currently we believe they were far more stocky and muscular than modern humans (from looking at the way their muscles connected to the bones), and they appeared to be more robust (several severely fractured bones show signs of healing).

I think the most interesting difference is that their children appeared to mature faster than ours, taking only 11 years to become fully-grown. (I think the evidence for this is still debated). Even though interbreeding evidently took place, it seems to me they were neverth

Morphologically there were considerable differences. Just because two species can interbreed does not make them the same. You would indeed know if a Neandertal was sitting across from you on the bus. I'm not saying he would be any less human, but this isn't the very minor genetic differences one finds between, say, an Amerindian and a San bushman. There may be Neandertal genes in everyone but sub-Saharan Africans, but all in all, humans are still a very closely related group, more closely related, for i

JOf course phisical anthropology makes a distinction. Just watch Bones or read a paper: you can divide caucasian, asian, african. It's like red, green and blue: you have those 3, and infinite colors in the middle. And red is not "better" than violet or pink. There is no problem with races, the problem arises when one race is arbitrarily defined as being "better" than others. Also, there are no strict bounds, just like you can't draw a line between red and pink.

Well, that's one problem. The other problem is the idea that those three groups are the "natural" divisions, the way red, green, and blue are the natural primary colors (for human eyes, anyway.) The primary colors are dictated by our visial anatomy; racial classifications have no such biological basis. In fact you can make both anatomical and genetic arguments for the existence of anywhere from two to several tens of racial groups, and none of these distinctions is any more valid than any other.

Taxonomy is about description and cataloguing. Biology is much much larger than that.

As to the "stronger" thing. I have no idea what you mean. Certainly there physiological differences. Modern humans are presumed to have had much higher endurance than Neandertals, who had a body much more built for a cold climate, and had shorter legs. Physically one would presume Neandertals were stronger, but moderns' greater range certainly would give them substantial edge at hunting, not to mention a larger access

No it wouldn't. There are numerous examples of interbreeding between closely related species. Interbreeding is not the definitive answer as to whether two species can interbreed or not. If it was, there would be no such species as a polar bear, and yet clearly, based on behavior and environment, polar bears are more than just a subspecies of brown bear.

When we talk about Neandertals, we're talking about a hominid that separated from our African ancestors and lived largely in isolation for several hundred

Phrenology is quite useful, and quite possibly the only means of divination that is subject to "real-time" influences.

For instance, If I were to take a tire iron to your head for a few seconds, I would suddenly be able to determine far more information about you, based solely on the bumps in your cranium. I'd know that you were in urgent need of medical care, that you were in possession of a flawed "fight or flight" response mechanism (perhaps an expression of Neanderthal genes...) and that you n

One of the problems here in saying whether Neanderthal's are a different species to Homo Sapiens is that the word species is poorly defined. It's actually been a problem since Darwin's day, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem [wikipedia.org] gives an idea of how long we've been arguing this. Personally if I feel if they were routinely successfully breeding with homo sapiens then calling them a separate species may be a bit of a stretch.

It's not poorly defined so much as there's no single definition that will do. The definitions provided are generalized by the very nature of the species concept itself. As with the definition of life itself, there's no black and white, but continuums. Take a look at ring species for the root of the problem with eukaryotic organisms. It gets even more complicated when you deal with procaryotes. It gets just as bad when you deal with some bizarre reproductive strategies like polyploidism in plants which can produce a new species in a single generation.

When two living colonies separate for a long enough period of time, they turn into separate species. My understanding of both Neanderthal and Homo Sapien is that while they are genetically apart, not so much as to still create a hybrid. For example, two Neanderthals may conceive a child with the same success rate as two Homo Sapiens. However when a Neanderthal mates with a Homo Sapien, conception isn't impossible but rather much more rare. Maybe this why there's only a 4% genetic differentiation to this day

There are significant physiological differences between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. Just because two species can interbreed does not mean they are the same species.

We know that Neanderthal evolved much more directly from H. erectus than H. sapiens. On top of that, Neanderthal existed separate from Modern Humans for most of their existence. The genetic differences are as stark as the physiological differences.

Just because two species can interbreed does not mean they are the same species.

That has been a part of the functional definition of "species" for quite some time.

There also significant physiological and genetic differences between different human populations - that's rather the point, you can't just draw a line that says "different enough to be a different species".

What allows for inter breeding is that the entire Homo genus has the same number of chromosomes. That is it.

There are significant physiological differences between Neanderthal and Homo sapiens. Just because two species can interbreed does not mean they are the same species.

No it's not definitive, but it's one of the major things we look for. Not just can interbreed but whether frequent breeding occurs between them without human intervention. In this case however, human intervention is kinda a given though. Actually I'm not alone in my skeptism, there are other scientists who refer to them as Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, a subspecies of Homo sapiens rather than separate. The ultimate proof will be in these genetic comparisions between us, and neanderthals but getting tha

One of the problems here in saying whether Neanderthal's are a different species to Homo Sapiens is that the word species is poorly defined. It's actually been a problem since Darwin's day, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Species_problem [wikipedia.org] gives an idea of how long we've been arguing this. Personally if I feel if they were routinely successfully breeding with homo sapiens then calling them a separate species may be a bit of a stretch.

Does that mean that since I was always told I was found under a rock...have rocks for brains and having a stubborn streak which makes me rock headed that I'm part of the suspected missing link for silicon based lifeforms?

Neandertals have been shuffled around considerably since the 19th century. In the 19th century they were viewed as an apeman. By the 1960s they were generally classified as simply a variety of H. sapiens. By the 1980s as some molecular data became available they were again shuffled out of H. sapiens into their own species. I have yet to see that changed. That two members of the same genus can interbreed is not an argument in and of itself for them to be the same species.

I had a physical anthropology professor at UCB whose classes were regularly disrupted by protesters (as usual, many non-students), in the 1980s for teaching this exact theory. He, and many others were called racist for failure to preach the "out of Africa" orthodoxy, and were forced out.

This discovery does nothing to dispute the "out of Africa" theory, for which there is ample evidence to date.